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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Today we will take a closer look at one of the latest releases from Shieldwolf Miniatures! As part of their Charging Forest release wave, Shieldwolf Miniatures has released two resin chariots to supplement their plastic and resin Mountain Orc miniature range. These exquisite chariots are a nice addition for your savage Mountain Orc army and come in two variety with either boar or great wolf pulling animals. As part of this review we will take a look at the great wolf variant.

The packaging

The resin chariot is packed in a blister backed with some protective foam. For those familiar with the packaging of this company, the chariot is packed in the same way as their superb resin miniatures. As I was too eager to open the blister I have forgotten to take a picture but I have managed to take a picture of the useful assembly manual which was supplied on the backside of the blister artwork.

The blister content

The blister contains a whole array of well-cast resin parts for the chariot along with enough plastic parts to assemble two orc charioteers. I have taken pictures of all the parts to illustrate the full content and the great quality of the casting. In the first picture you can see the main parts of the chariot including the base and wheels. As you can see the texture and casting is superb and I could only find some very small bits of flash which were easily removed. My favorite parts of this picture are the very nice skulls and the corpse of a poor victim. Note that you can click all the pictures for a larger view and easy slideshow.

Another important feature of the chariot are these great wolf miniatures. These miniatures are full of character and would also look nice used as mounts for some fierce orc cavalry! These great wolves are supplied with two head options, allowing you to assemble the wolves with closed or open mouths. I have chosen to assemble the great wolves with the more agressive heads as they looked more appropriate for an orc army in my opinion. You can also see the extra resin whipe which can be used to equip your plastic orc crew.

As mentionned previously the two-men orc crew exists out of the modular plastic infantry miniatures which were released earlier this year. We have reviewed them earlier so if you're interested in seeing these splendid miniatures take a look here. As you can see in the picture you receive enough parts to assemble two savage orcs.

The assembly

The assembly part is a bit more complicated than assembling their plastic infantry but luckily they added a nicely illustrated assembly guide. As part of the construction I first of all started with constructing the main body of the frame. The main body exists out of four parts being the chariot floor, chariot walls and the beam leading to the draft animals. In the picture you can see the partially assembled chariot body.

After I have assembled the body as shown above I have added the details on front of the chariot being the stakes and corpse features. After that I have glued on the wheels and the animal skulls. As I will be painting the chariot in the future, I have added the great wolves using blue-tack. In the following pictures you can see the fully assembled chariot along with a crew charioteer. I have also added some detail pictures of some chariot components.

To end the construction phase of this review, I can only conclude that the assembly was very easy despite I don't have much experience with assembling resin models. I have assembled the chariot and crew members using Army Painter model glue which can be bough in every well-supplied local hobby shop or can easily be sourced online. The assembly was also easy as every part is well designed to fit their position and there's almost no flash you need to remove! When I encountered some flash, it could easily be removed using either a needle tip or a sharp hobby knife.

The painted version

As I haven't painted my chariot yet and I wanted to show which results you can achieve. I have kindly borrowed this image from the Shieldwolf Miniatures website to illustrate the painting potential.

The conclusion

As you see and read in the review, this new release is one of superb quality and certainly deserves a place in the ranks of your mighty orc army. The quality of this chariot can also be found in their other resin and plastic miniatures which have been released since their company start-up. The amount of flash is very minimal and the construction of this chariot is very easy even for less experienced hobbyists. The chariot has been part of a dual release with both a boar and great wolf chariot.

You can find the chariots here in their webshop for the price of €25,00 a piece or you can buy four chariots for a discounted price of €90,00. I have also just found out that you buy the great wolves in a pack of five beasts for €15,00 allowing you to convert some nice an unique fierce orc cavalry. If you're looking for a local retailler you can check out this retailler page.